Friday, August 20, 2010

Georgia: Trasylol Cases Settles

Bayer has agreed to pay at least $60 million to settle about 150 lawsuits over Trasylol, a drug used to control bleeding during heart surgeries.

The settlements, which Bayer announced in court earlier this month, provide an average payout of about $400,000 per patient, said three people familiar with the agreements who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about them. Bayer pulled Trasylol off the market in 2007 after researchers found the medicine posed a higher risk of death than competing drugs.

Bayer halted Trasylol sales after studies linked the product to a 50 percent higher risk of death than rival treatments in patients undergoing heart surgery. Trasylol was approved in the U.S. in 1993 to reduce bleeding and cut the need for transfusions during open-heart surgery.
“After thorough examination of each case, Bayer will, at times, consider the option of settling litigation on a case-by- case basis,” Marcy Funk, a Bayer spokeswoman, said in an e- mailed statement. She declined to comment on the size of the settlements.

Sales of the injectable drug were 230 million euros ($292 million) in 2005, before falling 34 percent the next year after researchers raised safety concerns. Studies in 2006 and 2007 found the drug may cause kidney damage, heart attacks and strokes, according to a February filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
1,600 Suits
Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer faces at least 1,600 suits alleging the company hid Trasylol’s risks from patients and doctors, according to Bayer’s SEC filing. The vast majority of those cases have been consolidated before a federal judge in Florida, for pre-trial proceedings. Steven Derringer, one of Bayer’s lawyers, told U.S. District JudgeDonald Middlebrooks at a hearing in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this year the company had devised a “settlement program aimed at resolving not just one or two cases at a time, but to provide an overall framework for resolving the litigation,” according to a court-hearing transcript.

Derringer also told Middlebrooks at the April 12 hearing that the drugmaker had settled a total of 63 cases at that time. The company brought in a mediator to help resolve the cases, according to the transcript.
“We now have a track record, your honor, that shows these cases are being settled, parties can agree on values, and settlements do not depend on trial dates,” Derringer said.

The company had settled “with about 120 plaintiffs as of July 6, 2010,” without making any admission of liability, Funk said in the e-mailed statement.